Quake 3 Arena Demo

Multiplayer shooters always had a tendency to influence the entire industry, especially since they require constant innovation in order to attract the players and rise above all the other titles in the same category. Thus, titles like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament truly set the pace at the time of their release, but there were many more that did the same at some point.

Quake III Arena is definitely one of these games, especially since it went against the normal course of the franchise and dropped the singleplayer component entirely, in order to focus on providing the players with the most intense multiplayer matches ever seen. Thus, by introducing a few new gimmicks and reusing some old elements from the previous titles, this third installment managed to become one of the most successful multiplayer FPS games ever released.

Although it brought on a lot of revolutionary ideas and changes, the main idea behind the game was basically the same as it was in the first two episodes, only very much improved and heavily focused on multiplayer modes and maps. As such, beside the usual deathmatch mode, you can also take part in free for all, capture the flag and tournament matches, all of which have different objectives in the end.

To maintain the Quake feeling, the available weapons are mostly variations of the ones that were already present in the franchise, although there are some new additions as well. You can also pick-up a variety of other things around the map, such as medikits to heal your wounds, additional ammo, or even power-ups to increase your powers for a short amount of time.

Graphically-speaking, the game featured a revolutionary engine for that time, developed specifically to handle the new looks of the series. Hence, much of the technology employed was quite ahead of its time, which means that the engine got reused in a variety of other games for years to come, at least until the studio developed a brand new version of it.

In the end, Quake III Arena is as fun today as it was when it first came out, regardless of what happened in the meantime. The multitude of mods and user-created maps should provide you with endless possibilities and enough action to last you a lifetime.